Today was a wonderful restful day that included a four-mile walk around the lake and a long fall down what Maria Popova has called the “rabbit hole of discovery.” In no particular order, here are a few of the items I encountered on the trip down:

Second Act’s piece on former basketball player-turned-urban-farmer Will Allen highlights the intersection of African-American history and agriculture—a truly refreshing departure from the white, 20-something hipster profiles that abound in slow food stories. (While you’re at it check out the vertical garden Allen’s nonprofit Growing Power is working on in Milwaukee.)

The “I Write Like” analyzer will tell you which famous author you write like. I plugged a few chunks of text in and came up as Cory Doctorow more often than not. I wasn’t familiar (but I was dubious), so I checked out his website. Doctorow is a blogger and journalist who (he says) doesn’t update his personal site as frequently as he should. He’s also into sci-fi. I’m no longer dubious about the analyzer.

I read a few reviews of Game of Thrones, an HBO series that I might like if every single female character wasn’t subject to actual or threatened rape, molestation or other sexual violence. (Oh wait, there is that consentual incest, so maybe all-but-one female character…) Here’s an alternative perspective from the Atlantic.

On a more positive but related note: the Language Creation Society site. Familiar with only three languages cited on the home page—Dothraki (from Game of Thrones), Esperanto, and Klingon, which is apparently an “artlang”—I was waaaay out of my nerd league here. Fortunately, there is a language construction kit for the unitiated like myself.